Friday, July 25, 2008

Packard and leave?

"A top United States-based benefactor of population management programs worldwide has criticized President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for backing the Catholic Church’s hard-line position on reproductive health (RH) issues."

The report on the Philippines can be seen here, where it says among other things:

"Large families are one reason why 40 percent of the 85 million Filipinos live in extreme poverty. Many women and couples are highly motivated to plan their family size but have difficulty accessing contraceptives and quality services. Even though abortion is illegal and postabortion care scarce, hundreds of thousands of women make the difficult decision to abort their pregnancies, often in unsafe conditions.

"The Philippines was one of Southeast Asia’s first countries to develop a national population policy. Yet the fervent opposition of the Catholic Church to contraception continues to hamper service delivery and policy implementation. Under the current administration of President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo, the federal government has refused to buy contraceptives, worsening the shortage.

"The program’s top priorities in the Philippines included expanding rural families’ contraceptive options through innovative models of service delivery and outreach, improving postabortion care, and increasing access to information and services for youth. Foundation grantees achieved signiﬁcant gains in all three areas and made important inroads toward improving the policy environment, despite the fact that support from other donors for local NGOs was on the decline."

The report continues by naming the foundations and government agencies that the Foundation helped (the funding amounts can be found in other portions of the main report). Now despite the US$23 million worth of grants to 29 organizations, it would seem that the desired result has not been achieved.

US$23 MILLION! Do you think the foundation has been had?

PS. The report says the Philippines has a federal government. Do they know something we don't. A sitting Senator of the Philippines is pushing for federalism. Will he get funding from the foundation to campaign for this change in form of government? Or will the foundation allow themselves to be had? again?

3 comments:

I do not agree with the Consolidated Reproductive Health Bill. While there are many good motives for the bill, the inclusion of the promotion of a plethora of artificial birth control methods, many of which are abortifacients, take whatever good there is in the bill. While it has been said that there is no direct promotion of abortion (since it is also unconstitutional), there is no limit to the use of abortificients, which in my book are the same.

As Humanae vitae pointed out:

"17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men—especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point—have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

Limits to Man's Power

Consequently, unless we are willing that the responsibility of procreating life should be left to the arbitrary decision of men, we must accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions—limits, let it be said, which no one, whether as a private individual or as a public authority, can lawfully exceed. These limits are expressly imposed because of the reverence due to the whole human organism and its natural functions, in the light of the principles We stated earlier, and in accordance with a correct understanding of the "principle of totality" enunciated by Our predecessor Pope Pius XII. (21)